He watched all three games. That’s 270 minutes of insult, plus added injury time. He watched because he had nearly two dozen friends on the team, and “because I’m an American,” but Taylor Twellman acknowledges he’s never had a more uncomfortable period as a spectator than during the 2006 World Cup.
Because that was to be his World Cup. Not “his” in the sense that he would have outshone Miroslav Klose or Zinedine Zidane or Fabio Cannavaro. But his in that he was at the height of his playing career, the reigning MVP of Major League Soccer, a prolific goal scorer for a nation not yet known for producing many, aching to get the opportunity to take the field with the United States national team.
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Instead, he watched all three games the Americans played. Twellman was, unofficially, the last player cut from the 2006 U.S. squad. He knows as acutely as anyone the pain that seven American players will experience when the current squad of 30 is cut and the official 23-man roster for the 2014 FIFA World Cup is revealed in early June.
“I think those were the hardest three games I’ve ever had to watch in my career,” Twellman told Sporting News. “When I say hard, I mean to a point where for a solid three or four weeks, my food didn’t taste right, I didn’t sleep. You question a lot of things.”
He will go to the World Cup this time around. There is no disputing that. A series of unfortunate events led him to the great fortune of a television career he never imagined and a position as the lead analyst for ESPN’s U.S. national team broadcasts.
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Twellman, 34, loves his TV work and looks forward to June 16 and calling the U.S. World Cup opener against Ghana. He is proud of a career that saw him score 101 goals in 174 appearances for the New England Revolution, leading the Revs to three consecutive MLS Cup finals, although his playing ended prematurely because of a devastating concussion near the end of the 2008 season. He fought to return over the next two years but never was well enough to remain active for long. In November 2010, five months after another World Cup he might have played a part in, he announced his retirement.
So, yeah, as it turned out 2006 was Twellman’s moment. Until it was not.
His national team career never raged. His career numbers show 30 caps and six goals. But five of those goals came in a stretch that began with the final World Cup qualifier in 2005, which came a month after the U.S. officially clinched a berth, included a hat trick in January 2006 in a friendly against Norway and then the game-winner a couple weeks later to beat Japan. In an early March match against Poland in Germany, Twellman went the full 90 and his leaping challenge against goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek helped set up Clint Dempsey’s goal in a 1-0 American victory.
Then came the big prep game against Germany – and coach Jurgen Klinsmann – and U.S. coach Bruce Arena started Eddie Johnson, Brian Ching and Josh Wolff up front.
And Twellman knew exactly what it meant.
“I’ve never been benched when I’m on a streak like that – and that Germany game, I didn’t start,” Twellman said. “I called home from Germany, I remember this: I said, ‘Dad, I’m not going to the World Cup.’ He’s laughing, like ‘Calm down.’ I said I’m not starting and right now I’m on an unbelievable streak. It was a Clint Mathis-like streak, where everything I was touching was going in.
“This was a real opportunity, and I made the most of it. But that night in Germany, when I wasn’t starting, I called it.”
When the U.S. roster was announced in early May on ESPN’s SportsCenter, as Twellman recalls it, he still had not been informed of his status on the squad. He was not surprised when his name was not listed among the forwards – the three from the Germany game, plus star Brian McBride – and clicked off the television. A few seconds later, his Blackberry buzzed with an email informing him of the decision.
Twellman’s grandfather passed away two days after the roster was announced. His last words to Taylor were, approximately, “You got hosed.” He did not say “hosed.” Several friends on the team privately expressed their surprise at the decision, even their frustration.
It figures not to be quite so graceless this time around. When Klinsmann chose not to invite Johnson, Sacha Kljestan and numerous others to the 30-man training camp under way now on the Stanford campus, each player received a personal telephone call from the coach in advance of the announcement. But Twellman is not bitter about what occurred in 2006, or how it developed; he reached out to Arena not long after the World Cup ended; in his role as a broadcaster, Twellman interacts with Arena frequently. Sometimes friends are surprised that he “talks to that guy.”
Twellman only regrets that he missed that chance to wear the USA crest in Germany – and perhaps to help the Americans score more than two goals in the three games.
When the World Cup was over in 2006, Twellman and his family held a small party as a sort of signal it was time to move past the disappointment.
“It should disappoint you. It should piss you off. But it doesn’t dictate who you are as a player, what kind of a career you have,” Twellman said. “There’s no denying I should have been on that team, should have gone. Particularly with how the World Cup went, I could have been a factor.
“Obviously, the dream, do I think about it? Will I think about it in Brazil when I’m on the field to call the Ghana game? There’s no denying I would have run through a brick wall or cut off my right arm to play for the national team at the World Cup. For some reason, Bruce Arena felt it wasn’t in the cards for me.
“People are shocked, but I don’t have hard feelings. He has to make tough decisions, just like every coach in the world at this point. I’m just proud that I made the decision very difficult for him.”
